Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

I conducted an online survey on this question of gay marriage and posed the following questions: whether respondents were in favour of gay marriage—that is to say, amending the Marriage Act so that a union between two people of the same sex would be termed a marriage—whether they were in favour of such an arrangement being recognised as a civil union but not defined as a 'marriage', and of course whether they were opposed to either or both. There were 4,000 responses filed in a little over four weeks and of those 2,333 were in the electoral roll as being Wentworth residents. This was not one of those online surveys that people can just click on. Respondents were asked to provide their name and their address so we could check their residence, and were given the opportunity of making comments. I thank all of my constituents and those from other electorates who responded to the survey, and in particular thank those who provided comments, most of which were extremely thoughtful and considered. We have published on my website a representative sample of those.

Of the respondents from the electorate—and the figures for the overall survey were not materially different—72.7 per cent were in favour of gay marriage, that is, 1,698. There were 16.8 per cent—that is to say, 394 respondents—who were not supportive of gay marriage but favoured civil unions. There were 168, or 7.2 per cent, who were against both gay marriage and civil unions, and then there were 73, or 3.2 per cent, who were against gay marriage but did not express a view on civil unions.

Let me share with you some representative comments. The former Premier Nick Greiner said that he supported gay marriage 'as it is self-evidently a matter of justice'. He said:

It in no way stops religions or individuals acting in accord with their conscientious views. Also [it is] not a left/right issue. Support for proposal is consistent with conservative support for marriage and for stable long-term relationships as well as individual freedom.

Ashley Thompson wrote that gay couples' love is of equal value and worth as that between heterosexual couples, and said:

Who are same sex couples ? Daughters, sons, cops, doctors, businesspeople, politicians, artists, parents. In short – Us, We, people, humanity. Love is love.

Dr Alex Wodak, the very distinguished physician from St Vincent's Hospital, said that there were real public health benefits to ensuring same-sex relationships are recognised as marriage. He said:

I have spent the last 30 years in efforts to try and reduce the harms of HIV. We should also do everything we can to help gay couples stay together to protect public health.

There are many other examples of these on my website.

In terms of those who supported civil unions but not gay marriage, they really took almost a semantic view and agreed—as I think, if not all, certainly most members of this parliament would agree—that same-sex couples should have equal rights in terms of fiscal matters and equal rights generally, that there should be no discrimination. They take the view that marriage is, as a matter of definition, a union between a man and a woman, that it is sanctioned by millennia of tradition, that it is of enormous importance to many people on account of that history and their faith, and therefore an equitable balance is to recognise it as a civil union. I guess that is the sort of pragmatic point of view.

Some opponents of gay marriage came from a religious point of view. There were very few that you could describe as homophobic. It boiled down in large measure to this issue of definition. I would simply note that in countries in Europe where recognising what we could call gay marriage has not been a problem it is because they have had a tradition of distinguishing between the role of the state in recognising that union and the role of the church, whereas those functions have in large measure been fused in our tradition. (Time expired)

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